While I had bursts of insight and behavioral changes at first, these changes were more often than not short-lived, and I find that introspective techniques tend to have diminishing benefits, because there are no ‘tangible’ results I can point to mark progress.
This was my experience for the last ~10 years trying to overcome my procrastination as well. I tried lots of different techniques, they would work for a short period of time, and then I would return to baseline. I tried NLP techniques, I tried changing my biochemistry, I tried various checklist and todo systems, and everything was short lived.
It’s only in the last 1.5 years or so that I’ve come to a place where this stuff sticks, and I’m just getting more and more focused/motivated/productive every day. Here’s what I found work for actually internalizing these things:
The initial breakthrough was discovering the Experiential Array. This gave me a template for “the changes I need to string together to internalize things.” I took all of the tools that had been effective for overcoming procrastination, put them into the array, and then went to interview people to find the parts of the array that I was missing:
This was great because instead of just blindly trying to use the tool during the initial burst of “this is working!” I could instead use that initial burst to instead make sure that all of the pieces of the Experiential Array were in place. I created a number of tools to ensure that I made the necessary belief, emotion, strategy, and behavior changes, such as the Virtual Habit Coach:
The next big breakthrough was using Thinking at the Edge to try to understand the deeper structure of procrastination. This was when I started doing things like incorporating resistance into my vision, figuring out the relationships between techniques, and changing the parts of techniques that were unsustainable.
For instance, NLP state change techniques and sports psychology techniques didn’t take into account your current state, which is fine for a short burst of energy during a sports match, but is fundamentally unsustainable. This led me to developing the “Nearest Meaningful State” and “Nearest Playful State” techniques to make sure I could continue to use them forever.
The final piece was using the Experiential Array to map out 5-second strategies for identity-level change, and taking the time to internalze those strategies. This way as I was taking on new strategies, I was changing my identity in tiny little increments along with my behavior, which avoided the “Identity Snapback Effect” that I’d sometimes experienced with previous changes.
That, sir, might just have saved me ~10 years of work. Let me try to understand this better.
I took all of the tools that had been effective for overcoming procrastination, put them into the array, and then went to interview people to find the parts of the array that I was missing:
Are the text in the Experimental Array image a template for inputing these tools/”putting the pieces in place”? Could you point me to the source where the Array was formulated so as to better understand specifically how to fill in the text with my particular internal vocabulary/idiosyncrasies?
NLP state change techniques and sports psychology techniques didn’t take into account your current state, which is fine for a short burst of energy during a sports match, but is fundamentally unsustainable. This led me to developing the “Nearest Meaningful State” and “Nearest Playful State” techniques to make sure I could continue to use them forever.
This is definitely a new insight for me. It puts Play Maker and Meaning Maker into perspective and clarifies their purpose.
Lastly, the YouTube link leads to a “video unavailable” page. Does it have to do with the Virtual Habit Coach? It certainly looks like a complex and nuanced model that has potential huge upside if implemented correctly.
Are the text in the Experimental Array image a template for inputing these tools/”putting the pieces in place”? Could you point me to the source where the Array was formulated so as to better understand specifically how to fill in the text with my particular internal vocabulary/idiosyncrasies?
Yes, essentially was taking the different tools and slotting them into multiple arrays, allowing me to break up each “ability” related to overcoming procrastination into it’s component parts.
Lastly, the YouTube link leads to a “video unavailable” page. Does it have to do with the Virtual Habit Coach? It certainly looks like a complex and nuanced model that has potential huge upside if implemented correctly.
Yes, that was just the tutorial for the Virtual Habit Coach.
This was my experience for the last ~10 years trying to overcome my procrastination as well. I tried lots of different techniques, they would work for a short period of time, and then I would return to baseline. I tried NLP techniques, I tried changing my biochemistry, I tried various checklist and todo systems, and everything was short lived.
It’s only in the last 1.5 years or so that I’ve come to a place where this stuff sticks, and I’m just getting more and more focused/motivated/productive every day. Here’s what I found work for actually internalizing these things:
The initial breakthrough was discovering the Experiential Array. This gave me a template for “the changes I need to string together to internalize things.” I took all of the tools that had been effective for overcoming procrastination, put them into the array, and then went to interview people to find the parts of the array that I was missing:
This was great because instead of just blindly trying to use the tool during the initial burst of “this is working!” I could instead use that initial burst to instead make sure that all of the pieces of the Experiential Array were in place. I created a number of tools to ensure that I made the necessary belief, emotion, strategy, and behavior changes, such as the Virtual Habit Coach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d901U693d
The next big breakthrough was using Thinking at the Edge to try to understand the deeper structure of procrastination. This was when I started doing things like incorporating resistance into my vision, figuring out the relationships between techniques, and changing the parts of techniques that were unsustainable.
For instance, NLP state change techniques and sports psychology techniques didn’t take into account your current state, which is fine for a short burst of energy during a sports match, but is fundamentally unsustainable. This led me to developing the “Nearest Meaningful State” and “Nearest Playful State” techniques to make sure I could continue to use them forever.
The final piece was using the Experiential Array to map out 5-second strategies for identity-level change, and taking the time to internalze those strategies. This way as I was taking on new strategies, I was changing my identity in tiny little increments along with my behavior, which avoided the “Identity Snapback Effect” that I’d sometimes experienced with previous changes.
Hope that helps!
That, sir, might just have saved me ~10 years of work. Let me try to understand this better.
Are the text in the Experimental Array image a template for inputing these tools/”putting the pieces in place”? Could you point me to the source where the Array was formulated so as to better understand specifically how to fill in the text with my particular internal vocabulary/idiosyncrasies?
This is definitely a new insight for me. It puts Play Maker and Meaning Maker into perspective and clarifies their purpose.
Lastly, the YouTube link leads to a “video unavailable” page. Does it have to do with the Virtual Habit Coach? It certainly looks like a complex and nuanced model that has potential huge upside if implemented correctly.
Yes, essentially was taking the different tools and slotting them into multiple arrays, allowing me to break up each “ability” related to overcoming procrastination into it’s component parts.
The 90′s looking website that hosts the two books on the experiential array is here: http://expandyourworld.net/
Yes, that was just the tutorial for the Virtual Habit Coach.